UNDERSTANDING THE RADICAL MEANING OF JOB

Many educated young people are always out there on the streets looking for job when all the while are passing by many jobs that can change their lives if they take cognizant of them. And that’s where the problem is. How can they take cognizant of something when they have not been orientated on the nature of job?

As a social educator, I always believe that there is an avalanche of job opportunities out there in our societies much more than we can all do, inasmuch as society – people – is still alive. The reason why many graduates are job is because they do not understand the meaning of a job and how society provides jobs.

WHAT IS A JOB

Society as a living organism has many parts (interests and concerns) which happen to be the interests, the needs, the wants, and the desires of all the people that are collectively called society. Parts or sectors of any society include:

·         Sports

·         Cooking and baking

·         Fashion

·         Security

·         Energy

·         Finance and commence

·         Environment

·         Science and technology

·         Infrastructure and construction

·         Health

·         Spirituality

·         Governance and community

·         Humanity and social science

·         Business and economy

·         Entertainment (art and culture)

·         Communication

·         Agriculture

·         Transportation

·         Education.

In all these sectors are jobs.

Therefore, what is called a job or occupation is what people do for which they receive payment in cash. It is an activity performed for payment. Job is a narrow name used to describe problems you solve in your society. In radical sense, job is an art of solving problems. (For instance, I prefer to ask people, 'What problem do you solve in your society?' than to ask, 'What do you do? or 'What is your job?' This is my personal way of creating the mindset of having problems to solve in people's minds).

Every job responsibility requires special training on how to apply the available knowledge (information) to do this or that job – (the job that the information related to). It is important to know that there is no simple job – all jobs have their individual professionalism (higher information or knowledge) that one will have to be trained to acquire and understand before they can be referred to as a professional or expert or specialist in solving that particular problem.

When you reach that level of professionalism in whatever problem you solve, honour and respect and money will follow you. (Think of Timberland: shoemaking; think of Tatalizer: cooking and baking; think of Dangote: agriculture; think of any sportsman or woman: sports; think of Ben Cason: health; think of Woke Soyinka: education, etc.). It is not what you do that makes you important, it is your level of knowledge about it and how you do it that counts.

All people's problems are mainly classified into any of these sectors. These problems are sources of jobs for people, for us – you, me and others.

Think of any problem in the world and think of any profession and their duties, they won’t fall anywhere outside those sectors.

(People need the services of all the sectors in one way or the other in their daily lives, and that need creates jobs for each and every one of us. Our main duty, as parts of our society, therefore, is to select one or two of those sectors where we will like to help our society solve one or two problems – and that’s why we go to school – to master how best to solve those problems). Read this post WHY MUST I GO TO SCHOOL?

However, there are three levels of job in each sector which also classify people in the same sector into different levels of problem solving.

By Akerele Segun Helen

Read the next post WHAT ARE THE THREE LEVELS OF JOB? This post is one of our posts in the UNDERSTANDING THE REASONS FOR GRADUATES’ JOBLESSNESS AND HOW YOU CAN ESCAPE IT Series. You should also read the introductory post THE POWER OF QUESTIONING AND DOUBTING and also WHY MUST I GO TO SCHOOL? Along with UNDERSTANDING THE MEANING OF EDUCATION. Go back home.